Smile, And The Blood is Gone
by Dean'sNerdyAngel
Summary: A grieving Dean did not smile. Sam ponders just what is going on with his brother. Season 7 spoilers!


**SPOILERS for Season 7! A quick one shot with Dean's behavior increasingly...well, just a little different. Very Frank. I hope you like it!  
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**Disclaimer: If I owned Supernatural, there would be no more heart wrenching moments. There would be bromance, Tom Welling is a bad ass demon, and there is Destiel. Lots of Destiel. :)**

**This, however is just general. No romance. Bromance because we can't have nice things.  
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Something was wrong with Sam's brother. At first he brushed it off, because the differences were so small. But now it seemed to happen more often than not.

He was used to his shitty jokes, his moody behavior, the drinking. But this, this was something entirely different. This was scary, bizarre, almost surreal. Dean didn't do this. Not during these kinds of times.

He'd braced himself when Bobby died. He grieved, he cried himself to sleep at night, but he set up a wall inside himself to let Dean grieve his way, too. When their father had died, his brother was aggressive, cold. Defiant.

Although over the years since then his bravado began to falter with the stress, every single time someone died that he loved, that same Dean would kick in.

A grieving Dean did not smile.

Not like this. It wasn't a sarcastic smirk, a little "I'm fine but I'm actually" not smile, or a "I'm about to kick your ass" smile that, strangely enough, wiped a demon's cocky attitude from it's ugly face.

Not that he could blame them. It sent chills down his spine every time he saw it. Every time he caught it, he always felt a slight relief he was not on the receiving side of THAT smile. But this was a real smile. A real "I'm okay" smile.

He smiled at Sam, something he caught him smiling in the car, in the dark of the night, as the radio quietly (Yes, quietly. That was another strange sign of Dean's lack of grief) hummed. Going off that, Sam was also surprised he didn't get any more Impala bitching. When the Leviathan's posed as them, pronouncing them the FBI's most wanted, he'd done that a lot. Enough to make Sam wake up with a headache annoying similar to a hangover from the constant Dean rant. "I want my car. This is a piece of shit. I hate this. Hate it, hate it. When I find those Leviathans..."

Sam also noticed that Dean's nightmares weren't as nearly as violent. Earlier in the year, he'd wake up screaming, and Sam had given up asking if he wanted to talk about it because Dean only replied with a snap and a swig of tequila or whiskey or whatever the hell puts in that goddamn little bottle he hides in his pocket.

A few nights before Sam first saw the smile, he'd had another nightmare. Sam had snapped his eyes open to see Dean thrashing on his bed across the motel room, screaming nonsense of words, dripping with cold sweat. Tremors wracked his body for 5 minutes as Sam sat next to him, waiting. He'd learned in the past to just keep quiet and as long as Dean knew you were there, he would be okay. Then again, maybe not. That's just what Sam thought. But he found silence better for the both of them.

When Dean had finally calmed down, instead of elapsing into his usual Dean self, he sat up and looked at his hands for a long time. Sam continued to watch meticulously, but he was worried now.

"Dean?"

And instead of avoiding his gaze like he usually did, he looked at Sam with glazed eyes. "There's so much blood, and it won't come off, S'mmy."

"What?" But he'd knew. Dean must've been picturing his hands spilled with his guilt blood.

"So much...too much blood," he whispered, and then slowly lay back down on the bed, and closed his eyes, elapsing back into sleep. Leaving Sam to wonder just how bad Dean was going to get.

Now, in yet another car, an agonizingly old Honda, Dean's "favorite". Translation, a car to bitch about. But there was no bitching, no dissension. Dean had happily gulped down a Cola and a burger, a bacon cheeseburger, Dean's burger. "Not just a burger," he always said. "My burger."

He was smiling again, to himself. What could he possibly be thinking about, to make him make that smile? "Dean?"

"Yeah, Sammy?"

"Are you okay?"

"What do you mean? That's a stupid question," Dean said, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, and Sam saw that it was a few seconds before the smile dissolved into his hard line.

"You're smiling." Sam stated.

Dean's jaw clenched. "Yeah? So? A guy can't smile?"

"Dean," Sam scoffed, "you know what I'm talking about."

There was a long silence before Dean sucked in a breath, running a hand through his hair. He kept his gaze on the road, and Sam could see him mulling around the right words so he wouldn't look like a wuss.

"Any consolation, I swear upon my heart I won't laugh." Sam smirked.

One side of Dean's mouth twitched. "Because maybe if I smile, the blood will come off. Someday."

Sam stared at him in shock. "Oh. Well. Good for you." And he saw Dean smile again out of the corner of his eye, bigger than the rest. Maybe because he knew he still had his brother to help him scrub it all.

No more blood, just smiles. A distant dream, a dark future, and maybe a growing hope.

**Be sure to give me some feedback! Requests are open, always.**


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